Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat weblog has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech and privacy/confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is David Brophy, Birgit Clark, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof. You're welcome to read, post comments and participate in our community. You can email the Kats here

For the half-year to 30 June 2015, the IPKat's regular team is supplemented by contributions from guest bloggers Suleman Ali, Tom Ohta and Valentina Torelli.

Regular round-ups of the previous week's blogposts are kindly compiled by Alberto Bellan.

Friday, 22 July 2011

Friday, Friday,
It's your day and my day!
'Tis time to be sage
And to visit this page.

There we will find
Great peace of mind
Amid the Events
Which make so much sense ...

Don't forget to check the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page!

Want to get published? The Indian Journal of Law and Technology (IJLT) is a law journal published annually by the Law and Technology Committee of the Student Bar Association, at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, India. It's also "the first and currently the only law journal published in India specifically devoted to the interface between law and technology". Managing editor and SPICY IP team member Amlan Mohanty (left) is currently calling for submissions for Volume No. 8 of 2012. If you're interested, email him here or phone him on his mobile: 98807-23994.

A British-based reader has emailed the IPKat with the following request:

Making off with the iSwag ....

"I have been developing a web portal which provides Law Enforcement with practical tools and resources to assist them in dealing with software IP crime. One of the aspects I would like to include is the ability to search for cases which may assist in considering matters for potential investigation. Considering your expertise and experience, I am wondering whether you might be able to suggest a free on line source for these public servants? I have a mind to consider http://www.bailii.org/."

The IPKat has no better clue than BAILII and, as a civil Kat, he has rarely sought to root out materials on software IP crime. Do any readers have an idea where an accessible free online source of cases and presumably other useful material might be found? Merpel adds: I hope this portal will be open for everyone to use, and not just law enforcement folk. After all, it would be a good place for people who develop, sell or work with software to be able to check whether what they want to do -- or have already done -- is (i) legal, (ii) illegal or (iii) possibly legal or illegal, depending on how, when or why ...

The closing date for the SPC Blog's "Bucknell Book" competition is this Sunday night -- so don't miss out on your chance to fill your bookshelf with something large, grey, heavy but smaller than an elephant. You don't need to rush to enter the Art & Artifice handbag lcompetition though; the closing date's not till Sunday 31 July.

Hmm, she said, this wasn't
quite the sort of work
experience I had in mind

The IPKat and Merpel are both keen to help a damsel in distress. Well, actually she's not in too much distress. But she is a 2011 law graduate from the University of Surrey (First Class Honours in Law with International Studies). In September this year she is off to University College London to study for her LLM. No shrinking violet, she won this year's University of Surrey Mooting Competition, also picking up second prize in the 2010-2011 Bar Pro Bono Unit University Challenge. Our damsel is looking for some work experience in the legal field, particularly at the Bar. If IP isn't available, she'll make do with Public International Law, International Criminal Law, Human Rights Law, Public and Administrative Law, Environmental Law, European Union Law, Contract Law and Criminal Law. She's ready to toil from 8 August to 23 September this year -- and also throughout the upcoming academic year if required. If you're interested, email the IPKat and Merpel here with the subject line "Damsel" and he'll forward serious offers to her.

Around the blogs.IP Matters and Business Solutions, composed by Nigerian and West African IP-watcher, lawyer and business consultant Ayo Solarin, is a blog which the IPKat only came across today; there's not much around in Africa so far as IP bloggers are concerned, so the Kat is delighted to see Ayo's interest. The 1709 Blog has hosted two posts now on what has been a difficult week for online academic journal treasure trove JSTORE, both (here and here) by New York lawyer and blogger Christopher F. Meatto. WiseHarbor's Keith Mallinson offers more data-backed arguments in favour of collaborative standards for patent-based mobile technologies on IP Finance here, while on the same weblog leading barrister Nicholas Caddick QC asks questions concerning the cost of compensating phone hacking here.